The fact is that the distinguishing characteristic of the planning done now for a future wave is that both cost accounts and network tasks are "long" (or "large") compared to their near-term counterparts. We have already discussed the long task in this discussion. Project managers can substitute the words "large cost account" for "long task" and all of the statistical discussions apply, except that the principles and techniques are applied to the cost accounts on the WBS and not to the network schedule.